The present invention relates to a liquid supplying and collecting apparatus for a liquid ejection apparatus such as an inkjet printer, more particularly to a liquid supplying and collecting apparatus that supplies liquid to a liquid ejection apparatus and recovers liquid drained from the liquid ejection apparatus.
As a liquid ejection apparatus that ejects liquid from a liquid ejection head to a target, an inkjet recording apparatus (hereinafter, simply referred to as a printer), for example, is known. Such a printer includes in it an ink supply tank (liquid supplying member) for supplying ink to a liquid ejection head and an ink collecting tank (liquid collecting member) for recovering waste ink drained from the liquid ejection head. As such a printer, a type has been known that has an ink supply tank and an ink collecting tank both mounted on a carriage (for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 7-60991). In a printer disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 7-60991, when performing a restoration operation (cleaning) of a liquid ejection head, ink in ejection nozzles provided in the liquid ejection head is drawn by a pump with a cap being caused to closely contact the liquid ejection head. The drawn waste ink is collected and sent to an ink collecting tank.
The printer disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 7-60991 has the ink supply tank and the ink collecting tank mounted on the carriage, it is difficult to increase the sizes of the tanks. When performing a large amount of printing, cleaning and flushing of the liquid ejection head are performed an increased number of times. Therefore, when the printer is often used for a large amount of printing, an ink supply tank and ink collecting tank of small sizes require frequent replacement.
Further, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 7-60991 discloses a type of printer in which an ink supply tank and an ink collecting tank are located at positions other than a carriage (see FIG. 6 of the publication). However, even in this case, since the ink supply tank and the ink collecting tank are still located inside the printer, the tanks need to be located in a dead space where various types of parts forming the printer are not provided. Thus, the sizes and shapes of these tanks cannot be freely designed.
Particularly, in a case where an ink absorbing member is located in the ink collecting tank, the shape of the ink absorbing member affects the amount of ink that can be retained by the ink collecting tank. However, when providing an ink collecting tank in a dead space described above, the shape of the ink absorbing member is limited by the shape of the dead space. That is, the ink absorbing member cannot be formed to have an ideal shape (for example, cubical or rectangular parallelepiped shape).